Geo Targeting SEO Strategies for a Single Country
Websites do rank differently in the search engine result pages of different countries. You want your site to rank well in the SERP of the country that your business targets. When setting up the SEO strategies your website, you should consider the geo-targeting factors below.
Top-level Domain
A top-level domain (TLD) indicates to the search engines the location of your site.
- Use a .co.uk domain name if the majority of your customers are from the UK
- Use a .cn domain if you are to target customers mainly from China
Local Hosting
The search engines can determine your web site’s location through your web hosting. You should ensure hosting your site in the country where you are targeting.
However, there are exceptional cases. For instance, your site can be hosted with a UK hosting company, but the servers (and IP addresses) of this company are actually outside of the UK. Your site will not rank well in the UK.
Business Address
Placing your local business address at the footer of your site can certainly assist Google in determining the location of your website.
Language
It helps to have the site’s content being in the language of the country that you are targeting. It helps further when the copy is optimized so that for instance UK English can be distinguished from US English.
Inbound Links
Google has been using this extensively. If the majority of your site’s inbound links are from UK-based websites, even though your target audiences are actually Australians, your web pages will be ranked higher on Google UK than on Google AU.
Google’s Local Traffic
Google has also been using this information. If the majority of your site’s visitors via Google are mainly from Australia, your web pages will be ranked higher in Australia than in the UK.
As the future of SEO is to be integrated with branding, you should build or improve your site’s brand locally. You can consider local various advertising channels, whether they are online or offline. The hard work you have spent on branding your web site will eventually result in your target audiences searching for your brand via Google and increase on clickthroughs to your site.
Webmaster Tools
Under the “Set geographic target” option in your Google Webmaster Tools account, choose “associate a geographic location with this site” and pick the preferred country for your website to geo-target.
Related Information:
Posted on July 8, 2008
Filed Under Google, SEO |
Comments
5 Responses to “Geo Targeting SEO Strategies for a Single Country”
Leave your comments
- Your first comment will be reviewed before getting posted.
- Your subsequent comments will be posted without review.
- All spammy comments will be deleted.
Consise article. Thank you. How do you see a company with localized site versions for 10 or more countries executing against this strategy where local hosting isn’t an option?
To tell the Search Engines the ‘country’ your website is most relavent to
a) Have a top-level domain (TLD) for the country like .co.uk
b) Get the tld/ site hosted/ on a nameserver in the targeted country
Also, it would be the possible gain in load time, since it may take less hops (An intermediate connection in a string of connections linking two network devices.) for the browser to get the content.
[...] mentioned previously about Geo Targeting SEO Strategies for a Single Country. Besides top-level domain (TLD), local hosting, and business address, you will still be able to [...]
[...] - bookmarked by 1 members originally found by chrisdema on 2008-09-25 Geo Targeting SEO Strategies for a Single Country http://www.gordonchoi.com/geo-targeting-seo-strategies-for-a-single-country-20080708 - bookmarked [...]
do you know if its enough if i tell google in its webmaster tools which contry i target or do i also have to move my host to this country??